


The Space Between

by givemeunicorns



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Grief/Mourning, Mentions of past abuse, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-24
Updated: 2013-07-24
Packaged: 2017-12-21 06:37:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/897019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/givemeunicorns/pseuds/givemeunicorns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Camden was a closed casket and an american flag. Dad was a monster where a man used to be. Erica Reyes was a hole in his chest. But Boyd was the hardest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Space Between

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt fill from my tumblr(sitdowngreenburg.tumblr.com)
> 
> Anon asked:can I get some fic of Isaac mourning Boyd and/or Erica? Because the show is seriously lacking in this and I have a lot of feels.
> 
> Warnings: Just so you guys know this IS about mourning, so it gets kinda dark and I know that can be triggery for some people, so just a heads up.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own teen wolf!

            He always made it a habit to visit the cemetery, even when he was a fugitive.  It wasn’t as if he didn’t know that Camden wasn’t around to care, that he allowed himself to believe his brother’s spirit was cognizant of his presence. But he still went, still had to go, like it was the most important thing in the world some days. To remind himself that his brother had been real, that at one time they’d been happy, and Isaac had been loved.

            Then they’d buried dad, and he’d had two graves to buy flowers for. Derek seemed to get it, even if he didn’t agree with it. His opinions on Isaac’s father were clear, but he knew that need to be close to people you had lost. They didn’t talk about why Derek had stayed in the bones of the Hale house for so long, because they didn’t need to.

            When Erica died, he went to the funeral. He stood in the back, like a man in a dream. He still couldn’t remember seeing her body, but her casket was closed so he knew it must have been bad. Her father had nodded at Isaac in acknowledgement, he knew Isaac only in passing, knew nothing more than he was one of the few friends his daughter had ever had. There was nothing but resounding sadness in the man’s eyes and it made the guilt weigh heavy in Isaac’s chest. If Isaac had tried harder to keep them from leaving, this never would have happened. Two parents would never have had to spend months worrying about their child, only to find her dead, left to rot in some closet. Isaac could see the same accusation in Mrs. Reyes’ eyes. She may not have known about wolves, but she knew Isaac was to blame. That her daughter may not have been happy before he and Derek showed up and she started dressing and acting differently, but at least she’d been alive. At least she’d had a future then. And now she didn’t. Now she had nothing.

            It cuts him deeper, maybe deeper even than Camden’s death. It’s always been hard, but he’s gotten used to hurting. But Erica Reyes is a hole in his chest. He thinks about her every day and every night, how if he had gone with them, none of this would have happened. How he should have tried harder to get them to stay. How he should have been faster, smarter, stronger, should have gotten there before the Alpha’s destroyed her.

            He couldn’t fix this. He couldn’t fix it.

            Knowing that was killing him inside. He’s angry, so angry he just wants to tear something apart let them see how much it hurts him inside, her being gone.

            She was his first kiss. The first girl to ever be kind to him, to hold his hand and fall asleep against his chest. She pushed him to go after the things he wanted, taught him to be brave, showed him how to touch and be touched again. He and Boyd had gravitated to her like moths to a flame, loving her in every way they could muster, learned to love themselves and each other along the way. He’d gone so long sleeping with two other bodies close to him, that when he’d had to sleep alone against, he’d been afraid.

Isaac visits Erica every time he visits Camden. He brings her lilies, orange when he can find them. He knows they were her favorite. On her birthday, he buys a little toy car, a red Camaro, and leaves it for her. The only car she’ll ever have now.

Boyd is the hardest though. Because Boyd is the only one he’s actually seen die, and because he had only just gotten Boyd back. Because he had seen his friend getting better, even seen him smile. Then suddenly, he was gone. Forever this time.

The first time he’d seen Boyd again, across the hall at school, it froze the blood in his veins, pulled everything in his body tight. Because part of him wanted to run to his pack mate, to cling to him and beg for forgiveness. But the other part of him couldn’t even move, couldn’t even process the idea of facing Boyd, not with Erica gone. There is no way to fill the space she’s left between them. It wasn’t her fault, not even in the slightest, but when life had snatched her from their arms, it had rendered a crack in their world too spacious to leap across. He saw the look in Boyd’s eyes, dead and flat. Defeated. He knew he wouldn’t be welcome in those arms any more. He didn’t blame them.

But he’d been wrong. Despite the lose, they had pulled towards each other. Their was love between them still, painful as it was, and there was also an understanding. Their grief wasn’t something anyone else could understand, because Erica had been their pack mate. They had come into this together, but it was more than that. They’d known each other before the bite, even if they’d never spoken. The boy with the bruises, the girl with the seizures, the kid with no friends. When they’d been changed, their was already a sense of pack between them, this motley group of outcasts. They had made each other strong. And now, with one of them missing, it was like losing a limb.

The first time they spoke again was at her grave. He could hear and smell Boyd, right at his shoulder, but he didn’t have the courage to look at him.

“I loved her,” he said, after a long moment and Isaac’s breath caught in his throat.

“I loved her too. And I loved you. I should never have let you guys go.”

“You couldn’t have stopped us. Her mind was made up and there was no changing it. She’d have gone without us. She missed you though.”

“I miss he too.”

And then the tears were there, hot on his cold skin and he tried to scrub at them with his sleeve but then there were arms around him, and it all fell apart. Boyd pulled at Isaac and Isaac reached for Boyd until the folded in and clung to each other. Because that was all they had left.

They didn’t talk about, about the kiss they had shared after it, because it had been bitter in their mouths. Once, they’d reveled in it, three bodies becoming one. Now with only two, they weren’t sure how to fill the space she’d left behind. They try though, to trust each other, to be a pack again. Then the motel came and scrapped them raw, and they found themselves gravitating towards each other. Because Derek was still their alpha, but their pack had expanded somehow, without their knowing. They were pack mates by the bite, bound together by their own blood. But Scott, Allison, Stiles, Cora, and Lydia had snuck underneath their skin and that gave them hope, hope that maybe they could be whole again some day.

Cora puts her trust in Boyd and Boyd puts his trust in Isaac, with a plan to save their alpha. Then Kali kills Boyd by Derek’s own hand and Isaac feels the life leave his pack mate likes it’s being drawn out of him too. And all he can do is watch. All he can do is listen to Cora sobbing. He can’t fix this. He can’t fix it.

He doesn’t go to Boyd’s funeral. He doesn’t have the strength to bear the weight of an angry parent’s gaze a second time. He watches from a distance, and in an act of half forgotten penitence, he crosses himself when the minister starts calls for a pray. He hasn’t done that since Camden died, he hasn’t believed in god in much longer. But he does it still, because he knew what Boyd believed and it seems right.

He adds Boyd to his list of visits. Boyd’s is the hardest, because it’s also the freshest wound. For other reasons too. Boyd isn’t a gaping wound like Erica was. Boyd’s absence is sharp and deep, a precision cut, straight to the bone. He knows it will heal, that muscles and tissue will knit, but never the way they were. The affected limb will never be back to one hundred percent. That there will always be a deep and lingering pain under the flesh, the tugging of scar tissue to remind Isaac that, once, he used to be whole and now he isn’t. And he never will be again. One more scar in a long line.

But that doesn’t chase away the dreams. Often they are nightmares, reminders of how he failed them. More often though, they are pleasant. Sometimes they are real memories, sometimes their not. Sometimes he’s just laying tangled between them, their hands on his flesh, in his hair, kissing or talking or fucking. He knows their dead, they know their dead, but in those dreams it doesn’t matter because they are there and they’re all happy. Those dreams hurt worse than the nightmares, because when he wakes up, he can still feel the warmth of them, even though he knows it’s not real. Those nights, its harder to keep the shadows away.

Scott knows. Sometimes he comes into the room, louder than he needs to be, but he wants Isaac to know he is there. He waits, until he sees Isaac move, shifting over to make room for him in the bed, an unspoken acceptance of what he’s come offering. Some nights it’s sex, most nights it’s just contact. Scott is very good at reading people, at knowing what they need and trying his best to provide it. Isaac hates himself for needing it, because these are the things he needed from Erica and from Boyd, things they gave him without hesitation. And now their gone and he feels so fucking selfish for needing anything from anyone. Because it seems like the people he needs are always the people who get hurt. They don’t talk about what happens in the light of day.

They are a constant presence in his mind, at his back, and one day the anger of their loss forces Isaac to stand, to snatch his jacket and head for the door of Derek’s loft. Derek has been missing for a week. No one knows where he’s gone, but everyone knows why. But it eats at Isaac, gnawing at his soul like a dog on a bone. No one wants to talk about the empty space in the room or the people who once occupied it. And while he understands, while he knows it hurts, it infuriates him.  Because his friends deserved better than this. Better than any of this, but he can’t change the past. This though, this he can fix.

Everyone stops their various projects, another ‘lets search for clues’ type meeting, to look up at him. Isaac hasn’t talked much in the last few weeks.

“Where are you going,” Scott asks carefully.

“To find Derek,” he says, with no more explanation.

Isaac understands pain. He understands loss. And these wounds will be cleansed whether Derek will have it or not. Erica and Boyd’s memory deserved that, at the very least.


End file.
